


Not a Writer

by ideallyqualia



Series: Rare Pairs [47]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Universe, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideallyqualia/pseuds/ideallyqualia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stealth is useless among friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Writer

Oikawa wasn't a slacker. He was a diligent note-taker, and even with volleyball practices, he found time for homework. Iwaizumi never thought he'd see the day when Oikawa wasn't paying attention in class. Oikawa was only carefree when he knew he could afford it.  

Iwaizumi rose out of his seat, just a little, bending his neck to look at Oikawa's writing. His shadow fell over Oikawa's desk, and immediately Oikawa's arms slid to guard his work.

"Iwa-chan, you know better," Oikawa chided. "Nosy  _and_ disrespectful. Don't stand without permission."

Iwaizumi grumbled quietly and sat back down. The teacher didn't notice him almost stand, but eventually someone would realize Oikawa wasn't even looking at the board. 

At lunchtime, Iwaizumi grabbed Oikawa's shoulder and leaned forward. "What are you writing?"

Oikawa gathered the papers in his notebook, slid his notebook away, and turned in his seat to face Iwaizumi, legs folding under the desk. "Didn't your parents teach you about boundaries?" 

"No," Iwaizumi said, not bothering to argue and humor him. "I'm serious. You've been writing without paying attention again. What's so important?" 

Hanamaki and Matsukawa drifted by unnoticed, silently creeping behind Oikawa. Hanamaki appeared in Oikawa's view at one side, and Matsukawa reached to the notebook in the moments that Oikawa was distracted by greeting Hanamaki. 

Oikawa span around, hands suddenly on Matsukawa's. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked, voice innocent but eyes sharp.

Matsukawa pulled away slightly, dropping the notebook and the papers inside. Iwaizumi couldn't tell if it was an accident. Matsukawa's apologetic  _oops_ rung too falsely to be an accident, but Matsukawa could've just done it on impulse.

Hanamaki stooped to pick up a piece of paper. His eyes scanned the words, and his curious smile fell slack.

"What is this?"

"Let me see." Matsukawa took it from Hanamaki's hand, dodging Oikawa's hands swatting him and trying to take it back. 

"It's none of your business!"

"You're so chatty, I'm sure you would've told us anyway," Matsukawa said.

Oikawa crossed his arms stiffly, shoulders rising and chin turning down.

"Oikawa," Matsukawa said, "is this a love letter?" 

"To  _who_?" Iwaizumi asked, speaking so forcefully out of surprise that it made Matsukawa grin.

"This is the best part," Hanamaki began, but Oikawa waved at him and finally recovered his letter. 

"That's enough," Oikawa said. He hunched in his chair, prickling at their amusement with his hands at his sides.

"You know, if you didn't do it in class, we never would've known," Iwaizumi said.

"I didn't want to  _wait_."

"There's no reasoning with him." Matsukawa sat down, in the desk next to Oikawa's. 

"That's not even your seat!" Oikawa pointed at the owner across the room, but Matsukawa didn't look or care.

 

* * *

 

Oikawa's backpack was full of letters. They were neatly folded and tucked away, but they were there. 

Oikawa had no intention of actually giving them to Kunimi. He wrote them silently, when he thought of something he wanted to say or when he imagined something happening that involved Kunimi.

Oikawa wasn't poetic, and he didn't try to be, but he could appreciate it. Ever since Hanamaki and Matsukawa read one of the letters, he decided to not come close to trying poetry. If they were nosy, then Oikawa guessed that others could be just as bad. 

Oikawa hid his backpack in his locker for volleyball practice. It was the safest place, hidden and secure from the group of people most likely to have a motive for snooping. Oikawa twisted the lock to make sure it was stuck. 

He turned, and Kunimi was standing a few steps away, still dressed in school clothes. He wasn't late, there was still time and not everyone was here. The locker room was starting to fill up with people, but it wasn't that crowded.

"Better hurry up, Kunimi-chan," Oikawa said, careful to avoid calling him by his first name. In letters he was Akira, more for the musicality of his name than familiarity, but Oikawa didn't want to say it out loud.

"Sure." Kunimi walked around him, shuffling up to his locker and squinting at his lock to undo the combination.

Kunimi wasn't lazy, Oikawa knew. He was too observant to misunderstand. Kunimi could be conservative with his movements, but if he was lazy, he wouldn't have joined the team and stayed. Oikawa took his shuffling quiet steps and soft movements as something else, the fondness of sleepiness without actually falling asleep. Kunimi was too sarcastic for the illusion of adorable sleepy kouhai to hold, but that made Kunimi's reluctance with teasing more entertaining.

Oikawa leaned against the wall next to the door out of the locker room, facing the court as he waited for everyone to finish getting ready. Kunimi walked out in practice clothes, walking over to Kindaichi and Matsukawa with his eyes noncommittally fixed on them.

Calling him cute would be cheating, Oikawa thought. It was too easy. Writing it felt mindless, too. Oikawa wasn't satisfied with that. It didn't do Kunimi justice, not the tightness of his shoulders shielding his embarrassment or the small frowns Oikawa would call  _pouty_ except they weren't, Kunimi didn't pout. His mouth pressed together when he frowned, and his lips were thin and delicate in any shape.

Oikawa left the wall and took the court after a few more minutes, calling for everyone's attention as his arms swung by his side with purpose.

"If you're not already on the court, then you should be," Oikawa said. He heard someone fumble in the locker room, and Yahaba stepped out, tugging on the bottom of his shirt.

Frazzled, Oikawa thought, was what he wished he could see Kunimi being, but Kunimi never left any chances for people to see him unprepared for anything. Oikawa dropped that thought before he could entertain it to its horrible completion.

Being a captain, too, felt like cheating. Oikawa didn't take advantage, but he was still privileged to be the one ordering others around and monitoring them. Oikawa didn't pick the exercises, but he could still drift around between players without their coach scolding him.

Oikawa tried to correct Kunimi's receive posture, but when he bent to align their arms to guide him, he heard Hanamaki give a forced cough, and he decided to not follow through. Hanamaki and Matsukawa could still tell someone the truth, or they could make fun of him at the very least. 

Oikawa held back and just watched, discretely. By his opinion, it was discrete, anyway. When it came to spiking, Oikawa was incredibly grateful that he was the one setting to Kunimi, and that Kunimi managed to earn a spot on the team as a starting member. He was obligated to watch then. Once, Hanamaki asked him what was so great about Kunimi, and Oikawa almost mentioned being able to toss for him, but he realized that Hanamaki was a spiker, too, and he would take it the wrong way. Or joke about it.

Practice ended, and Hanamaki was still heckling Oikawa. Hanamaki followed him to his locker, and Oikawa rigidly navigated through the combinations as Matsukawa joined them.

"Are you finished?" Oikawa asked. He pulled the locker open, and his backpack fell out. The locker wasn't meant to hold  _that_ many things, so it was propelled out by the force of its squashed confinement.

"Way to go," Hanamaki said.

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm. Your captain deserves better." Oikawa crouched to lift it, but he didn't realize that he was grabbing it by the bottom. A binder and a couple notebooks fell out. The three of them looked down at the dumped pages, opened at random from gravity.

Oikawa thought they might try to "help," but as he was busy giving them warning looks, Kunimi and Kindaichi appeared from their side of the locker room.

"Do you need help?" Kunimi asked.

"It's fine, Kunimi-chan," Oikawa reassured him. He kept his eyes on Matsukawa and Hanamaki, and he missed the rustling of papers. He didn't look until he saw Hanamaki and Matsukawa's faces change, shifting to mild blank horror.

"Oikawa-san, what are these?" Kindaichi asked.

Oikawa swiveled and saw a couple bits of papers in their hands, still folded. Kindaichi was starting to unfold one, but Oikawa yanked it out of his hand. 

"It's none of your business," Oikawa said at a clipped speed. He didn't look or feel angry, but his melodrama was a habit.

"Why is your backpack full of these?" Kunimi asked. "It doesn't look like homework at all."

Oikawa turned and frowned at him. "You're all so nosy! You have to know everything about me." 

Oikawa plucked the rest from Kunimi's hands and shoved them into his backpack. He zipped it up, double checking to make sure everything was closed, before setting it on the floor so he could change. He dressed in a hurry, and he hooked his arms through the straps and stalked out alongside Iwaizumi.

"Don't you think you should tell him?" Iwaizumi asked as Oikawa went through his backpack to make sure all the letters were inside.

"I don't feel like it," Oikawa whined.

"Are you actually scared?" 

"I don't feel like it means I don't feel like it. Pay attention, Iwa-chan."

 

* * *

 

Oikawa was easily persuaded if it was by Kunimi. When he asked for help or asked if someone wanted to go somewhere, Oikawa volunteered. Once Oikawa established that he was willing to help Kunimi, he pushed to invite Kunimi places. Oikawa offered to treat him to lunch at a coffee shop one weekend, and by now Kunimi wasn't surprised by Oikawa asking him.

"You never told me what those were for," Kunimi said, pointing at a folded paper sticking out of Oikawa's notebook. Oikawa managed to convince him to do homework here, but Kunimi was paying less attention to his homework and more to Oikawa.

"Nothing important," Oikawa said as he kept writing.

Kunimi reached for another notebook, and Oikawa thought that was safe until he saw Kunimi pull out a stray paper form it, devoid of any creases. Oikawa couldn't remember what that page was.

Kunimi's eyes settled on the page, and his neutral expression remained. Oikawa relaxed and returned to scribbling numbers.

"Oikawa-san, did you write this?"

"Let me see."

Kunimi slid it to him, and Oikawa choked on his breath when he recognized it.

"Don't take this seriously, Kunimi-chan, someone else wrote it as a joke."

"It looks like your writing."  

"If you thought so, then don't ask if I wrote it!" 

Kunimi didn't argue with that. He kept his eyes on Oikawa, but Oikawa saw his hands fidgeting a little, and he was biting his lip, frowning softly. 

Oikawa's mouth twisted for a second, holding in his breath and looking away. "I did write this letter," he said with a sigh. He slumped forward a bit, groaning and bringing his arm up to hide his eyes in the crook of his elbow. "This is unfair. It was supposed to be a secret."

"Can I see the others?" 

"No," Oikawa said. "No." 

Kunimi was silent, and Oikawa could tell that he was thinking. Kunimi's fingers linked together and unlinked in absentminded repetition, chin turning down. Oikawa saw the pink of his ears, cheeks, and lips when his arm fell away, and he felt a tight pulse in his chest dropping to his stomach.

Oikawa slowly reached for his backpack. He could hide his embarrassment well, but right now it didn't look like Kunimi could. Oikawa pulled out the other letters and let them fall on the table, and he pushed them to Kunimi.

"I can't ignore my kouhai," Oikawa said resignedly. "It's better that you read them than the others."

Kunimi eyed him warily, a question lying in his hesitant movements for them. Oikawa sat there and leaned into his hands, waiting to see if Kunimi would actually blush.

**Author's Note:**

> (General A/N that exists at the end of all my fics): I find unsolicited concrit really rude, I'm not looking for any. Please don't tell me someone was OOC/something happened you didn't like/it's too short/etc. in any bookmarks or comments.


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